Tag Archives: Jesusa Vega

We celebrate with ARTES (Iberian and Latin American Visual Culture Group) the publication of a new edition of Nigel Glendinning’s Goya and his Critics by Dr Sarah Symmons and Dr Jesusa Vega.

Nigel Glendinning’s Goya and His Critics was first published in English in 1977 and appeared in Spanish some five years later. This was the first great synthesis of the reception of Goya as an artist and this new edition assesses the importance of Glendinning’s research not only for Goya studies but for Hispanic art and culture in general. This study includes essays by Jesusa Vega and Sarah Symmons, a foreword by Valeriano Bozal and analyses Glendinning’s mission to reveal the mysterious and evocative art of Goya to a culture which found the artist’s originality disturbing as well as inspiring.

Sarah Symmons-Goubert has won numerous awards for her academic work. She has published five books on art history, including Art & Ideas, Goya (Phaidon Press, 1998) and Goya, a life in letters (Pimlico, Random House, 2004).

Nigel Glendinning (1929-2013) is remembered for his perceptive writings on Goya and for the range of his knowledge on the art and literature of 18th century Spain. He had a distinguished academic career at the universities of Southampton, Trinity College Dublin, and Queen Mary University of London. He was a Corresponding Member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, and an Honorary Fellow of the Hispanic Society of America in New York, as well as the winner of the international Elio Antonio de Nebrija prize awarded by the University of Salamanca (2007). In 1998 he was created Commander of the Order of Isabel La Católica, an honour conferred on him by King Juan Carlos of Spain. In 2001 he contributed to the creation of ARTES and served the group as honorary president for more than ten years.

Glendinning’s work is celebrated in the forthcoming edited edition of his classic book, Goya and his critics (1977; revised Spanish edition 1983). The new volume, published by Ediciones Complutense, contains the text of the 1983 Spanish edition with a selection of Glendinning’s more recent essays on the topic. The editors, Sarah Symmons and Jesusa Vega, contributed two memoirs of Nigel as a Hispanic art historian, his contribution to Goya Studies and to Hispanic visual and literary culture. The publication also features a tribute by Valeriano Bozal.

ARTES member Professor Jesusa Vega and keynote speaker at our Goya Symposium last November writes in El País on the decision by the Bosch Research and Conservation Project (BRCP) to deattribute two paintings in the Prado: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things and The Temptation of St Anthony.